In the African Diaspora, blackness by definition also includes Mestizaje or Mestiçagem, the Spanish and Portuguese words meaning racial mixture. In other words, because of the history of racial mixture in the Americas, most persons of African descent in the Americas also have Native American and/or European ancestry in their family trees. We I say the Americas, I refer to all countries from Canada to Argentina and all of the islands in the Caribbean. Discussing the idea of blackness and mestiçagem is a sure way to start a debate or argument depending on the perspective of the persons involved in the debate. Anthroplogists have for many years written that the idea of race, racial classification and racial identity are atextreme opposites when one compares the United States with Brazil and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.

During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, persons of African ancestry were encouraged to define themselves as blacks even if non-African ancestry was a part of their genetic history. In this way, persons of African descent empowered themselves by claiming a black identity in a society that denigrated blackness. On the other hand, although there have existed various black social and cultural movements in Brazil, there has never existed a mass, national civil rights movement in which persons of African descent idetified themselves as blacks. Thus, in some ways, if compared with the United States, black identity in Brazil today could be compared with two eras in United States history: pre-Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights. In other words, as in the United States before and after the Civil Rights Movement, there are people who have accepted a black identity and others who avoid blackness at all costs even when their African ancestry is obvious.

This rejection of a black identity was common in the United States and Brazil. The comedian Richard Pryor captured this denial of blackness perfectly on one his albums. Imitating the typical response of the black American in the 1950s, Pryor exclaimed, “Black? Don’t call me black, I’m a negro!!”

The legendary Malcolm X also acknowledged this denial of blackness amongst many black Americans. In one of his famous speeches, Malcolm X affirmed:

“Very few of our people really look upon themselves as being black. The think of themselves as practically everything else on the color spectrum except black. And no matter how dark one of our people may be, you rarely hear him call himself black.”

It is important to understand that during the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, African-Americans began to reject the term negro in favor of the term black. In Brazil today, Afro-Brazilian militants encourage persons of visible African ancestry to reject terms like moreno, preto and mulatto in favor of the term negro.

These ideals have created conflict, exclusion and adherence to group allegiance. Although studies seem to prove that race inthe United States and Brazil are completely different, I would argue that the two systems of racial classification are notas different as they appear. For instance, it is well known that Brazilians use many terms to identify a person according tohis or her phenotype (moreno, mulatto, sarara, for example). But this is also true of African-Americans (chocolate, caramel,high yellow, blue-black, etc.) Studies have also shown that, as in Brazil, African-Americans that look less African have acertain degree of advantages over others with darker skin or more African features (nose, hair, lips, etc.).

In Brazilian terms, one of these groups would be defined as black and the other, brown. In the past few years, Well-known Brazilian social scientists and journalists have intensified their arguments that these groups should be treated as two totally separate, distinct groups although socioeconomic studies prove that these groups experience discrimination in similar ways. In Brazil today, there is a dispute about racial classification between one side that believes Brazil is a mixed race nation that is not and should not be divided into a bipolar nation as exists in the United States. On the other side, there are black militants who insist that the country is already divided into white and non-white. Which side is right and what is the difference in comparison with the United States?